Reckoning (The Empyrean Chronicle) (38 page)

A nimbus of green light, white at its center, encased
Danica’s hand as she pressed it to his chest. The glow rapidly spread to cover
the entirety of his body. He became at once aware of two things: first, that he
was being drawn back toward his body, and, second, that he felt the weight of
many eyes upon him, and perceived many vague shades occupying the clearing.

He resisted the pull to return to his body as a tumult of
emotion tore through him. The thought of Slade, his ultimate nemesis, returned
from the land of the dead to steal the last remnant of his family was more than
he could bear, and under the weight of that single thought something broke in
him. The inarticulate rage that had burned in him for months spent itself in
that moment, and from the ash of that inferno something much stronger arose, a
stone-quiet, immutable resolve. For the first time he found himself free from
the ever spinning maelstrom of his thoughts and found a quiet, still place in
his mind.

He appealed then to the God that had eluded him all his
life, to his mother, to Asa, to his ancestors and those that had gone before
him and worn the shield of the Marshal, and finally he called upon his own
magic, to any shred of grace and power that might dwell within him. A profound
strength and energy surged through him and poured from his sternum, which he
perceived as deep purple flame that blossomed to cocoon his entire being.

His father’s voice echoed in his head.
What you see now is
the mantle of your own power. It is the heritage of the wizard untainted by the
pall of fear, hatred, or anger like that of the Senestrati, for it is not those
black emotions but another force entirely that moves you now
.

Again Elias felt the pull toward his body and again he
resisted, until the pressure became too much to bear and he surrendered, using
the pent up force to slingshot past his body and into Danica’s.

He passed partway into Danica’s body before an iron force
pulled him back. He became aware of a shimmering silver cord connecting his
spirit body back to his physical, which lay between him and Danica. He cursed
himself, as he intuitively grasped the function of the cord, a knowing that
came to him like a long-forgotten memory.

“Fool,” Danica sneered, and as Elias looked upon her face he
could see the shadowy aspect of Slade superimposed over her features. “You
thought to force me out of her, but you are not dead. You are yet bound to your
own body, and thus cannot occupy another. You have lost this time, boy. You
will live, as will I—in your dearest sister’s body. Through her I will wield a
power more terrible than Mirengi has ever dreamed.”

Elias was jerked back toward his body as Slade, through
Danica, poured healing magic into him. He felt Danica’s spirit screaming out,
struggling against Slade as the fell wizard siphoned off her magic, her energy.
Elias held up his spirit-hand and willed energy into it.
I think not.
His
hand burned with purple flame and he chopped down sharply, severing the silver
cord that bound him to his body.

A din of voices screamed as one as Elias shot into Danica
and tore Slade’s spirit from her body in a resounding concussion.

†

Danica inhaled sharply as she found herself back in her
body. The world seemed less bright, but she could feel her fingers and toes,
the pull of gravity and the earth about her once more. She felt at peace to be
whole again, save for the alien presence in her mind. Her free hand shot up and
slapped her in the face.

Concentrate
! Slade’s voice whispered in her mind.
He
hasn’t long.

“What do I do?”

“Remember your lessons with that old fool, Phinneas,” Slade
growled, this time through her own mouth. It was a most peculiar sensation to
have someone else talking to you through your own mouth. “Surrender your magic
to his body. Let the energy move through your hand. The healing power in you is
drawn to disease like a magnet—just get your mind out of the way so that it can
pass into him.”

As soon as she complied she found that her autonomy had
failed, as her awareness was drawn back and settled somewhere behind her eyes,
where she was free to look out on the world and feel a vague connection to her
body though she was unable to exert any control over it. Danica would forever
look back upon this experience of being a prisoner in her own body as the most
arcane of tortures, unbearable even for a few minutes. She had no doubt that
sharing a body with Slade would have crushed her psyche within a matter of
days, if not hours.

That, however, was not her fate. For she presently saw a
purple cloud of energy descend upon her—a ferocious, unearthly light like
nothing she had ever seen. She felt Slade’s despair at once as his words fell
from her lips, rising into a rapid crescendo as the purple cloud rebounded,
gathered power, and then passed into her.

She reeled at the force of the impact, though the energy was
ethereal and passed right through her body. Motes of light danced about her and
then winked out one by one. She looked down at Elias to see that color had
returned to his face and he appeared to be breathing easily. She made to lift
her hand from his chest and investigate what had happened, when a voice sounded
her mind.

No!
it cried.

She kept her hand fast on Elias’s sternum and looked up to
see her mother’s spirit kneeling on Elias’s other side, her spectral hand laid
on his crown.

Elias has severed his silver cord so that he could enter
your body and drive Slade’s spirit from you.

Danica, panic stricken, shifted on her haunches so that she
could stand. “Where are they now?”

Don’t take your hand from him!

Danica froze, for she could sense the necessity in her
mother’s tone. “I won’t, but I beg you, tell me what’s happened.”

The spirit empowers the body, child, and without some shred
of it present, the body will die. You must wait until Elias’s returns to his
body, for if you withdraw your energy from him now he will not have a body to
return to.

Danica looked about the clearing and found it empty. “Where
have they gone?”

Your brother and Slade have gone to a place between worlds
and are even now struggling against each other
.

Danica swallowed the lump of fear caught in her throat. Elias
had sacrificed himself to spare her a fate worse than death and she was damned
if she was going to shirk reciprocation. A quiet resolve stole over her. “How
long?”

Edora’s brow knitted.
Not very. The body has a kind of
consciousness of its own, but it cannot sustain itself for long once the
etheric cord has been cut.

“I’ll handle things here. Go help Elias.”

I’m proud of you, Danica.

With that her mother vanished and Danica bent all of her
will into keeping her brother alive.

Spirit Duel

Once the paroxysm of energy and color cleared Elias
found himself lying on a patch of summer grass, the yellow glow of the sun warm
upon his skin. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt warm. He breathed the
scent of southern earth. It all felt real. Almost.

Elias sat up and noticed without surprise that he was at Mayfair
Manor. Slade stood on a patch of scorched earth some twenty feet away, the very
place his father had died. He looked as he did that day—dressed in black
breeches, a black vest, wearing a wolf’s grin, a naked scimitar in hand. “A
clever gambit you made in cutting the cord so that you could drive me from her
body,” he said, “but we’re in my world now, Elias—a world in which I’ve had
much practice, thanks to you. This time it will go as it should have that day. You
die here, where your father did.”

Elias stood and found he wore his father’s duster with his
sword in hand. He tightened his grip on the braided leather hilt. Slade had
gotten every detail correct, down to the red dye of the leather, the exact
shade of the scabbard. For all Slade’s accuracy, though, Elias knew it to be an
illusion, just as the Senestrati’s power was an illusion, based on smoke and
shadow and childhood fears. And like in the schoolyard, the only way to defeat
a bully was to stand up to him, tip the momentum in your favor, for when the
crowd of onlookers began to cheer for you, you moved faster, punched harder,
burned brighter, and then even the mighty could fall, and at the moment Elias
had a feeling that there were a great many souls pulling for him, though he
could not see them. Yet he also had a hunch that an illusion this well wrought
might just be able to cut—even kill.

“Have you nothing to say?”

Elias looked up from his sword and into Slade’s haughty
glare. “There is much I would say to you, scourge of mine, had I the time, but
I have other battles to fight. So.”

“Straight to combat then, no banter? The duel is a lost
art.”

He’s stalling
. The thought came to Elias from the
quiet of his mind, the deep place beyond instinct and intuition. He knew at
once that he had to return to Danica, to his body, and soon. Elias started
toward Slade and suddenly the necromancer was on him as if he had stepped
through a hole in space.

Elias turned his scimitar without a thought, again reacting
from the void. Slade pressed him with a flurry of blows that seemed to issue
from different directions simultaneously, his black steel blurring into a
crackling semicircle. Elias retreated under Slade’s brutal offensive, managing
to parry and evade each slice but unable to riposte or counterattack. Elias
felt a crunch under his feet and realized that Slade had maneuvered him onto
the blasted patch of earth on which his father had died.

Elias hesitated as he absorbed this fact and Slade,
capitalizing fully on his psychological advantage, drew close to the Marshal
and came at him with a thunderous, finishing blow. Elias caught the slanting
overhand slash on the broad of his blade at the last moment, but Slade had slid
inside his defenses and utilizing his superior leverage pressed his scimitar
down on Elias in a painstaking contest of strength in which the Marshal
steadily lost ground, the forte of Slade’s blade creeping perilously close to
his throat.

“How then,” Slade rasped between clenched teeth, “does it
feel to die on the same ground as did your father?”

Elias could think only of the impossible burn in his arms as
Slade bore down on him until it occurred to him that he didn’t have a body at
present—he had only his thoughts, the contents of his mind. He locked eyes with
Slade, who at once appeared insubstantial, composed of shadow. His fatigue melted.

“We’re not where my father died,” Elias said, “we’re in his
house.”

Slade recoiled, for his scimitar vanished and he found
himself closed in a wood paneled room flickering with orange candlelight. Duana
sat in a modest homemade chair by an equally modest bed, and wore a nonchalant
expression that stole all the fire from him, for in the Marshal’s bland
features an alien intelligence lurked. Slade reached for his power, all the
energy he had accumulated since his death, to discover but a few tattered
threads remained to him, rather than the deep reservoir that had sustained him
since he last crossed swords with Duana. He withdrew further from Duana and
pinwheeled through the air as he tripped over something.

“My father’s trunk. It contained his duster and other
effects, including the sword for which you lusted with such ardor. The same
sword that reaped your destruction.” The Dashin materialized, suspended in
midair between them, slowly rotating in a nimbus of brilliant cerulean light. “Your
power is quite beyond you now.”

Slade scrambled away on his back, crabbing toward the closed
door and his only means of egress. Elias stood. The Marshal took a slow step
toward him, then another, only he wasn’t the same man. Duana had changed
somehow, expanded, his aura star-shine bright. Slade tried to stand but like in
a nightmare he couldn’t muster the strength for an invisible weight pressed
upon him. “How?”

“I remembered something. Something I was taught as a child
as I lay in bed.”

Slade’s head bumped against the door and he desperately
tried to stall as he groped for the doorknob. “What—what did you remember?”

Duana fixed his oil-fire eyes, which had grown impossibly
wide, upon him. “Who I am,” he said. He reached down, grabbing Slade by the wrist
as he feebly tried to slap his hand away, and pulled him to his feet…

…and into the center of a circle of stones that he was all
too familiar with. Duana had vanished along with the bedroom, leaving Slade
alone in the warding circle. Not one to waste time on indecision, he willed
himself across the perimeter of the circle, but as he crossed it the runes
etched into the stones emitted a brilliant, thrumming white light and with
concussive force repelled him as easily as a window a fly. The images of the runes
formed in midair above the stones drawn in white fire, handily creating an
energetic wall that bound him fast. The very rune-circle on the astral plane
that had kept Danica from him for so long now served as his prison. Somehow
this safe haven had been energetically linked to the Duana siblings, bound to
them, as an enduring means of protection, but such a thing defied the laws of
magic.

“The laws that keep you, perhaps,” whispered a woman’s voice
from beyond the circle.

“Forgive me for allowing you that moment of hope only to
snatch it away,” said Elias who materialized at the outside edge of the circle,
“but I couldn’t resist.”

“You’ll get no groveling from me,” Slade spat. “I’ve already
ruined your tidy life and spoiled your sister forever. I will rest contentedly
in this prison with that knowledge.”

“You are not to remain here,” Elias said, “it is time for
you to depart.”

“You aim to free me, fool? I warn you—once I am free from your
snare I will give you no quarter. Where in tarnation do you plan to take me?”

“Into the light,” Elias said with a vague smile.

Slade withdrew into himself. “That’s impossible, I serve
another master.”

“You are beyond his reach now.” Elias was joined by a
multitude of other beings: a woman of surpassing beauty who had Danica’s eyes;
Padraic Duana free of the grey hair and age lines he wore when Slade crossed
swords with him; a man in white robes with shoulder length golden hair clothed
in a like colored aura; Elias’s fair-haired betrothed; a middle-aged man who
wore a platinum circlet and purple tunic embossed with the heraldry of house
Denar, and countless other shining beings.

Slade hated himself for the quaver in his voice. “Where is
it you are sending me?”

“To a place where all sins, even yours, are forgiven,” said
the woman with Danica’s eyes.

“But where all debts are paid,” thundered Elias.

“In full,” said Padraic Duana, with something almost like
pity in his eyes.

Elias raised his hand and from his palm shot a beam of white
light, so pristine that it was not unadulterated by even a single scintilla of
any color or impurity. The beam struck Slade in his center and he screamed as
warmth radiated through his being and his inherent density began to scatter. Then
the host that stood with Elias joined him, and a wash of white light erupted in
the center of the circle and when it cleared Slade Kezia was gone.

Elias passed into the circle and approached the silver pool
in its center. He turned back and faced the spirits that had stood with him. His
parents and Asa approached. “It is time for you to return,” Padraic said.

“I am ready,” Elias said.

“You will forget much of what you have learned when you
return to your body,” his mother said, “but you will know what must be done
when the time comes. Tarry not, your sister is minding your body. Now, go.”

Elias’s attention lingered on Asa. “Asa...” he began, “there
is so much to say.”

Asa’s eyes which had been so guileless in life now burned
with an ageless, depthless fire. “I know your heart, Elias Duana,” she said,
“but there is no time.”

“This is not goodbye,” Padraic said, “we are with you always.”

After one final look Elias plunged into the silver pool. No
white tunnel awaited him, or an empty stretch of space, he simply
shifted
and then felt the ground beneath him, felt the density of his corporeal form
around him once more. His body, however, seemed to forget him and would not
obey his commands. He focused on wiggling his fingers and toes, and after an
arduous, interminable amount of time, sensation abruptly rushed back to him. Elias’s
eyes opened.

He sat up and, like a dream fleeting upon waking, the
details of his experiences outside his body had already begun to fade. Flashes
of brilliant color filled his mind’s-eye and images of his parents, Asa, and
his battle with Slade flickered then winked out with each blink of his eyes. His
equilibrium returned to him momentarily, as if he had never been gone in the
first place. His first thought was of Danica.

He found her unmoving by his side, sprawled face-down. His
heart stuttered. Had he failed when he drove Slade from her body? Had he been
too late? He reached a tremulous hand toward her and took her by the shoulder. She
felt warm to the touch, radiating a near preternatural heat. He gave her a
gentle shake and called her name.

Danica’s eyes snapped open. “I thought I lost you.”

“Then we’re both happily surprised,” Elias said.

“I had the strangest fever.”

Elias chuckled. “Me too.”

Danica sat up. “I saw Mom, but it all seems so hazy now. Was
it a dream?”

“If it was then it was one we shared, because I saw her
too.”

Danica nodded. After the strange circumstances of the last
few months she could believe almost anything. She stood and brushed herself
off. “We have work to do don’t we?”

Elias fixed his eyes upon hers and in them he saw that old,
familiar glint once again. “Yes,” he said, “yes we do.”